Girl steals train, crashes it into building in Sweden

In a bizarre incident that seems straight out of a movie, a 20-year-old girl, employed as a cleaner in Sweden, on Tuesday stole an empty commuter train and drove it straight into an apartment building suffering severe injuries.

The young girl appears to have been unable to stop the train once she reached the end of the line in the exclusive suburb of Stockholm this morning.

The woman was going at such speed that the train continued for nearly 100 feet off-rail before it smashed into the apartment house where three families were asleep, the Daily Mail reported.

The train-thief was trapped inside the drivers cabin for two hours before emergency services were able to cut her from the wreckage.

She was conscious but suffered serious injuries and had to be airlifted to Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm.

The train was empty and stationary at the time of the theft and none of the five adults reportedly in the house at the time of the accident were hurt.

Train operators Arriva said the woman, who was employed by an external cleaning company, "really put her foot down".

"The train drove straight through the barrier, so it must have been going a lot faster than these trains normally do," spokesman for Stockholms Lokaltrafik Fredrik Cavalli-Bjorkman said, adding that at normal speed, the train would have been blocked by the buffer stop.

"The trains should not be out and about this late. We are investigating what had happened, who has got the key and access to these trains," he said.

"It's like something out of a movie," said police spokesman Robert Heurgren.

"We received notification of a missing train early on Tuesday morning and the next thing it is found smashed into a home," he said.

Police commander Ulf Lindgren said: "The fact that we're not dealing with a more serious accident is absolutely unbelievable, both for those who were inside the building and on the train. It's incredible lucky that the situation is not worse."

It is not clear how the woman got the keys to start the train's engine, but a rail technician at the scene this morning told Swedish newspaper Expressen that one of his colleagues "lost the keys to this train, is in a bad state and is blaming himself".